Thermochemical Energy Storage for Solar Power Plants – European Research Project TCS-Power

To this day universities and industry developed technologies like wind turbines, hydroelectric and solar thermal power plants, which already feed electricity grids all over the globe. However beside the infinite and costless availability of all renewable energy sources, the availability is also inconsistent from the short term perspective.

Thus one major obstacle researchers, all over the world, are tackling on the pathway into the century of sustainable electricity production is the development of energy and cost efficient storage systems ...

Intermittence of renewable power supply and high generating costs are the major technical and economical obstacles to widespread commercial use of regenerative energy sources. In contrast to photovoltaic or wind power, concentrated solar power has the potential to provide dispatchable power on a defined capacity level by integrating large-scale thermal energy storage. Efficient, reliable and economical thermal energy storage technologies will thus improve economics and raise the market potential of CSP technology. The EU founded research project TCS-Power is dedicated to evaluate the potential of thermochemical energy storage in CSP-Plants as well as to develope a pilot storage system.